It is
perhaps not art, but it is magnificent; nothing less stupendously
Spanish would have sufficed; and I felt that the magnanimity which had
yielded Spain this swelling opportunity had made America her equal in
it.
We went to the cathedral the first morning after our arrival in Seville,
because we did not know how soon we might go away, and then we went
every morning or every afternoon of our fortnight there. Habitually we
entered by that Gate of Pardon which in former times had opened the
sanctuary to any wickedness short of heresy; but, as our need of refuge
was not pressing, we wearied of the Gate of Pardon, with its beautiful
Saracenic arch converted to Christianity by the Renaissance bas-relief
obliterating the texts from the Koran. We tried to form the habit of
going in by other gates, but the Gate of Pardon finally prevailed; there
was always a gantlet of cabmen to be run beside it, which brought our
sins home to us. It led into the badly paved Court of Oranges, where the
trees seem planted haphazard and where there used also to be fountains.
Gate and court are remnants of the mosque, patterned upon that of
Cordova by one of the proud Moorish kings of Seville, and burned by the
Normans when they took and sacked his city.
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